The Gay Marriage Case Against the Minimum Wage

Why should voters have a say in consensual relations between people?

You could probably spend a lifetime reading the academic literature about the practical consequences of the minimum wage for employment. Despite reams of hard data, economists still squabble over the question. (Keep that in mind when you hear rosy projections about new programs. If economists can't agree on how a program has worked in the past, then how much weight should we give predictions about how one will work in the future?)

But you don't see many moral arguments over the minimum wage, except for vague assertions that it's wrong to pay people less than a certain amount. The moral case against a minimum wage is scarcer still, so scarce you might think there isn't one. But there is, and many people find it intuitively appealing.

Just look at the debate over gay marriage.

Gay marriage has soared to new heights of acceptance; 60 percent of Americans now find it unobjectionable. There are lots of reasons for this, but as a political matter the change has been driven by two basic arguments. The first is an egalitarian syllogism: (a) straight people have a right to marry, (b) people have equal rights, so (c) gay people have a right to marry.

That argument rests on an even more basic one, grounded in liberty. As the Supreme Court majority put it in Obergefell: "The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person. . . The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights" — rights such as choosing your marital partner. A majority of citizens cannot deny that liberty to a minority simply because they disapprove.

A slogan from the gay-marriage debate put it a lot more succinctly: "When do I get to vote on YOUR marriage?"

This neatly captures the sense that when two grown men or women consent to something, a third party has no business butting in to overrule their arrangement. Just because a majority of voters in a city or state find the arrangement morally objectionable does not mean they should be able to nullify it by a show of hands.

Oddly, this view — entirely correct, by the way — prevails most in liberal bastions that lately have been enthusiastically ignoring it. Just a few days ago Washington, D.C., approved a voter initiative that would hike the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The same day, a New York panel appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) recommended an equivalent wage for fast-food workers; the state's labor commissioner could impose it by fiat. The city council of Portland, Maine, has approved a $15-wage referendum for November. But more conservative places have raised the legal wage floor as well. Last November, voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota approved minimum wage hikes in their states.

The parallel should be plain. When Adam and Steve freely consent to a relationship — whether it amounts to a fleeting sexual encounter or a loving partnership lasting unto death — then it's nobody else's business if they do. So why should it become a matter of public deliberation simply because money changes hands? If Adam offers to pay Steve $3 an hour to flip burgers at his fast-food restaurant, and Steve agrees, then what right does anyone else have to veto their agreement? To borrow a line from the late political philosopher Robert Nozick, why should the state interfere in "capitalist acts between consenting adults"?

All analogies are inexact, and this one invites some obvious objections. You might say, for instance, that intimate relations fall into a different category than economic ones. The former are profoundly personal, while the latter are impersonal to the point of being mercenary. So the state can regulate the latter but not the former.

The trouble with that objection is that it establishes a moral hierarchy for personal relationships, deeming some more inherently valuable than others — which is precisely what opponents of gay marriage want to do. They claim straight relationships are inherently more worthy of state recognition than gay and lesbian relationships. Do progressives really want to accept that line of reasoning?

Other objections to the analogy suffer from the same problem. You could say allowing Adam to pay Steve only $3 an hour is immoral, but outlawing relationships that some people consider immoral was the whole point of gay-marriage bans. You could say allowing Steve to work for $3 an hour will affect other workers who'd rather not, so government should forbid him to for the sake of society at large. But allowing government to forbid consensual activity that "affects society" amounts to a regulatory license of infinite scope: With a little creative thinking, anything can be said to affect society.

True, at present all of this seems thoroughly academic. The likelihood that the U.S. will abandon minimum-wage laws anytime soon sounds almost preposterous. Then again, once upon a time so did the idea of gay marriage.

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Sure they do: they use simplistic, logical arguments based on selective facts to support their policies, and they ignore anything that’s inconvenient or contradicts their views. You know, the same way social conservatives, Christians, and many other political, religious, and ideological movements do.

Belief systems are the opposite of logical reasoning. You believe despite reason, not because of it. Logic is often used to attempt to justify the belief, but inherently faith and reason cannot be reconciled. Reason and logic lead one to support and advocate for a position based on its intellectual merit. Faith and belief lead to the support and advocacy of positions entirely outside of their merit.

Belief is the only rational conclusion based on a situation where you have incomplete knowledge or evidence. And, before this topic gets mired down in your obvious animus of religion, let’s just be clear that I am not even necessarily talking about religion here.

When I get on a plane, I have no empirical proof that it shall make it safely from point A to point B, I simply weigh the statistics on plane crashes, consider the self-interest of the airline and employees of the airline, and determine that I will most likely survive. Belief, ultimately, but complemented by reason. Therefore, in principle, belief is not automatically incompatible with reason. And, if that is so, then in principle a belief system is not automatically incompatible with reason.

Some people have experienced and/or seen things (i.e. facts which establish reasoning) that lead them to believe in what they do. It’s an intensely personal relationship with a “higher power” (i.e. God, which is what I call Him) or what not. To each their own right?

As far as progressives go, well the liberal folks just want a cause to champion. It’s how they roll.

All Christians use logic and reason selectively because Christianity; you cannot look at the totality of historical, scientific, and linguistic evidence about Christianity and believe that historical beliefs that are an essential part of Christianity are true. In addition, when it comes to theology and dogma, there are intrinsic and insurmountable logical contradictions within Christianity.

then I will insert the word “libertarians” into the sentence and it will be equally true. … There are idiots and jerks who claim all kinds of belief systems.

LIbertarianism isn’t a “belief system”, it’s a preference and a value judgment, namely that the world ought to be run by a strict application of the NAP. There is no “system” beyond that, and no need to “believe” anything.

(NB: in principle, you can be both a libertarian and a Christian fundamentalist of some stripe, although such people are rare.)

The argument is sound only if one believes in liberty and freedom of choice. Progressives (and conservatives) do not. Therefore there are no logical inconsistencies in their reasoning, because their reasoning is “if it feels right to me we should allow it and if it feels wrong to me we should ban it.” Hinkle should not be surprised to get vague assertions about why it’s wrong to pay less than $x per hour when these people have no underlying principles on which to arrive at conclusions. They may try to use a principle as an argument if it helps make their case, but they don’t actually believe in that principle, so they’ll abandon it as soon as it undermines their case.

They do though have a reason. People should be paid a wage that allows them to live at the very minimum, moderately comfortable. So, they can afford rent for example.

Almost everybody, including most libertarians, believes that such a thing is a moral good. It is therefore false to say that progressives differ from others in this belief.

Where progressives differ is in their belief that government coercion can produce that outcome; that belief is irrational because both economic theory and many years of experience have shown it to be false.

Ah, but when two people of the same sex decide to marry they are doing something the Progressives approve of. When two people decide to enter into an employer-employee relationship, especially if it isn’t wonderfully lucrative for the employee, then they are doing something the Progressives disapprove of. Sex, so long as it isn’t cis-normative Patriarchical PIV sex, is fine, but business is dirty, dirty, DIRTY!

It all stems from this belief that entrepreneur-employee relationships are inherently exploitative. They’re always looking for a chance to screw over business owners, because they see all business owners as Scrooge McDuck swimming around in his vault of gold coins.

And that is why making a liberty argument is nonsensical to progressives (conservatives too). Liberty is not high on their list of defining principles, if it’s there at all. Progressives who favor the right to SSM do not do so because they believe in liberty and freedom of choice. They only believe in doing things that feel “right.”

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I think that the immorality angle is a bit of a straw man. Isn’t the real justification put forward by minimum wage activists the concept that unequal bargaining power between employers and employees must be redressed? To be clear, I am against these massive minimum wage increases– but the morality argument seems beside the point.

Good looking women have unequal bargaining power over ugly women. Rich men have unequal bargaining power over poor men. A teenager with no life experience gods damn well better have unequal bargaining power over a person who has years of experience, owns several restaurants, and has to make business decisions that affect him and all of his employees.

the concept that unequal bargaining power between employers and employees must be redressed

That’s the real straw man. If the employer makes an offer that a worker does not like he can always walk away. It’s not like there is only one employer to work for, particularly for unskilled laborers. The ever increasing advances in communication and transportation make workers much more knowledgeable and mobile. They can more easily identify and relocate to the areas where jobs are better. Employers in competition with each other for the best workers will offer wages commensurate with the work to be done. If an employer and a worker both agree to the terms of employment, then it is immoral for anyone to require that the worker remain unemployed (and the employer less productive) because the terms do not meet some arbitrary criterion.

If I have a million dollars in assets and hire a person with $900,000 in assets to work for me, that’s unequal bargaining power for a collectivist, which is 1) somehow bad (presumably it would be better if we were equally poor) and 2) somehow remedied by the minimum wage denying the poor worker an opportunity to pursue a labor contract at all.

But there’s always “unequal bargaining power” between buyers and sellers: in a free market, the buyer can’t be forced to buy from a particular seller, and can’t be forced to buy at a particular (minimum) price set by the seller, either. While the seller is (usually) well motivated to sell her wares and/or services.

But gays are smart, savvy, rich, able to fend for themselves, and of course fabulous. But those who work these menial jobs for low wages are unskilled, low-IQed, don’t know when they are being abused, and of course hopelessly vulgar. That is the crude, implicit model among the bien pensant and comfortable, and that is why the gay marriage argument against minimum wages will fail.

Three people cannot marry at all under any circumstance. Nor can one person be married twice at the same time. Why? Because there is no law defining such legal relationships at all.

Legal marriage has been defined as a legal relationship between two people. All the SSM case did was to remove the restrictions on the sexes of the participants, as a matter of equal protection.

Can a mother marry her two daughters, or just one?

Just one, provided the daughter is an adult. In that case, however, there may still be prohibitions against incest in the law. It may be possible to remove these with the same kind of reasoning that went into the SSM legal decision, if there is no compelling interest for these restrictions.

That is under the assumption that “marriage” has one very particular definition. It doesn’t and you don’t get to define it for everyone in a free country. MY religion has no such stipulation on “marriage”. I am American, I am also a minister, therefore I can let people marry who fit MY definition of “marriage”. There’s the rub. Your religion defines marriage for you. No one is asking you to perform or engage in a marriage you don’t believe in. However, my religion defines “marriage” for me differently. Why does your religion get to be the deciding factor?

In the US, it doesn’t. So now you are free to NOT marry (yourself or two other people) and I am free to do so. Choice, it’s a beautiful thing. THAT is a matter of common sense, and neither of us brought up anything of “biological” certainty, since neither of our comments addresses biology in any fashion.

BTW, you’ll say that “marriage” is defined by the Bible, it’s not. It’s a French word. The Bible was written in Aramaic and Hebrew. So the word used in the Bible was either ‘kiddushin’ or ‘ondiruna’, assuming that the word is the same as it was over 2000 years ago. In my religion it’s called “handfasting”. Why? Because marriages have been going on since long before either of our religions existed.

My religion defines “marriage” differently as well. Unfortunately, I am denied the right to let some people marry, though they fit my definition.

As an example, I use Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice – due to the crap economy, a 4-person plural marriage makes more sense than a 2-person marriage.

Bob and Alice hold down full-time jobs, as in many 2-person marriages – their incomes pay the bills, supply the health insurance, etc. Carol has a part-time job – her income goes into the “Rainy Day” fund, which also doubles as the “2 weeks in Tahiti” fund. The part-time nature of her job allows for time to run errands, pay bills, go shopping. . . Ted stays home, does the housework, cares for the garden. . . and is home to supervise the children – no running the streets, no joining gangs. . . but definitely learning things like respecting other people’s persons and property, and other family values.

Religion and government both came into being about 10,000 years ago – for at least 90% of the history of man, marriage was defined by those getting married in conjunction with those performing the ceremony – if there even was a ceremony that long ago.

“Not being the same thing” is insufficient for government for making legal distinctions between people; government needs to demonstrate a compelling interest for granting benefits or privileges to one class of people and not to another class.

There are many holes in your reasoning Win: 1) “Not being the same thing” is used frequently by government to discriminate in military service (no women in combat roles), voting (citizens, over 21s, and non-felons only please) social programs (over 67 for higher Social Security bennies, SNAP for the needy). So it is in fact sufficient and reasonable that INDIVIDUALS be subject to disparate treatment by government. 2) Government does not need to demonstrate a compelling interest for granting benefits, or in anything it does, as demonstrated above. Congress just has to pass a law, or the President just has to issue an EO. 3) Married couples are collective entities, like Corporations and Unions, defined and charted by government. They are not individuals. While individuals in those collectives maintain their individual negative rights, the positive rights conferred to collectives are not subject to equal protection or any other constitutional provision. There was no constitutional right for a man to marry another man, until the Nazgul made it up.

The case that conservatives (and most “liberals”) make for drug prohibition can be made for gun control. Conservatives aren’t any more prone to logic and reason than their irrational statist liberal counterparts. When these people want to command and control, it really doesn’t matter if there’s a good argument or not.

Why should voters have a say in consensual relations between people? Because the Constitution says they can. Amendment 9: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Amendment 10: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” IOW, if it ain’t in the Constitution, the people get to have a say. That’s what was wrong with Oberefell: what Kennedy said was in the Constitution, plainly wasn’t.

Why should voters have a say in consensual relations between people? Because the Constitution says they can.

That is horseshit and a half. I’ve read a lot of idiocy on these boards but the idea that the consitiution serves as no limitation on the tyranny of the majority is factually incorrect on the bases and morally reprehensible to boot. “It wasn’t the government what put those japanese in those camps, it was the people! Therefore any action that the voters say is A OK is good by me!” disgusting.

Being reserved to “the people” means precisely that the majority cannot impose its will on a minority through government action; that is, you ought to be personally free not to bake cakes for homosexuals, just like homosexuals ought to be personally free not to bake cakes for Christians. But government can’t intervene. You also ought to be able to have private housing subdivisions where either homosexuals or Christians are not allowed.

Now, you have a point that, in principle, states should be able to pass discriminatory laws. However, many state constitutions follow the federal Constitution, and furthermore, many of the limits on government of the federal Constitution have been applied to state and local governments.

it’s a falsehood that SS”M” was about “equal rights”,because homosexuals already had the ability to marry;AS MARRIAGE IS DEFINED,man-woman. it just wasn’t what they wanted,although many QRs have married man-woman for various personal reasons. This is all about REDEFINING marriage to be something it’s never been,in several thousand years of human existence. What defines marriage is up to SOCIETY,not the courts. 30+ of 50 US states voted AGAINST SS”M”,and Congress lawfully enacted DOMA to settle the issue between states,as it is defined in Article 4,section 1 of the Constitution. Congress is –specifically– given the power to decide the Acts,Records,and Proceedings of a state as relating to how other states have to treat them. That SCOTUS ruled against DOMA is just one more of it’s recent bad rulings,like Kelo,Obbamacare,etc.

This is all about REDEFINING marriage to be something it’s never been,in several thousand years of human existence.

In most of those “several thousand years of human existence”, people just shacked up and called each other “married”. That’s a good tradition to go back to. There were plenty of homosexuals back then too who lived together.

What this is all about is that government is giving a select group of people large amounts of tax dollars and special legal privileges, and that group happens to be people who shack up in a way that Christian churches approve of. That is unacceptable. Whether we call the target group of these privileges “married” or “partnered” or whatever, those privileges should be available regardless of the sex of the partners.

marriages are SOCIETY’s business. it’s a societal construct. since society delegates power to it’s government,it rightfully becomes government’s concern and area of authority.

marriage is a societal institution,ever since the first tribe joined a man and woman. Said ceremony generally being done by the tribal chief; their “government”. Religions merely ADOPTED the practice,regularized it and kept better records,because they recognized the benefits to everyone.

marriage isn’t any “right”,people have always had to meet some criteria to get married. No close relatives,no “underage” mates(varies state-state,country-country),man-woman. In other societies,you had to get permission from the parents,from the lord or master,the church,witch doctor,shaman,etc. Marriage has always been a privilege,in every society.

Wrong. throughout most of human history, this “government ceremony” you speak of was two people getting into a tent and having sex… governments (usually) had no involvement in the matter until the renaissance, when the church thought it would be easier to keep track of who was tithing properly if it knew who was married.

In other societies,you had to get permission from the parents,from the lord or master,the church,witch doctor,shaman,etc. Marriage has always been a privilege,in every society.

Also, just because there may have been historical instances where say tribal leaders had to approve a marriage doesn’t mean it is appropriate to continue the tradition. Many stupid traditions have been put to rest because they are incongruent with individual liberty.

since society delegates power to it’s government,it rightfully becomes government’s concern and area of authority

So when government decides that the best way of improving society is to engage in eugenic breeding and pair people up based on genetic compatibility, and then take away the children to raise them in government group homes, that would be OK with you too, right?

Or is your “marriage is a societal construct” argument valid only as long as society’s choices happen to agree with your personal ones?

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What the writer here does not appear to understand is that logic and mathematics are a branch of philosophy. This explains why philosophical argument — which is what he’s badly mimicking here — can be expressed mathematically. That being the case, I would love to see him write out the equation for his absurd claims. His syllogism would collapse like a house of cards. The article isn’t about presenting a logical argument; it’s about presenting a pseudo-logical one interested to patronize his salivating commenters, who need no convincing, but obviously appreciate the writer’s confirmation of their own inherent biases. He’s preaching to his own choir. How dull.

you utterly, and I suspect wilfully, sidestep the root issue in sodomite “marriage”: mainly, that two males or two females can NOT marry any more than a rooster and a whale can. Nature itself declares it is utterly “other” than marrage between one man and one woman. Marriage was established and defined by the God who made us all. Two males, or two females, simply cannot. Thus yuor entire argument comparing it to minumim wages is specious, and worthless.

When did I get to vote on YOUR marriage”, the queers ask…. there never was any need to vote on MY marriage, it is simply what God established and calls marriage. Sorry, you can’t recall HIM.

two males, or two females, can do whatever they want, live however they will, and I don’t care. But to call that marriage? Might as well call a tree a river. Theyb are two things “other”. No amount of voting can make an elephant an ant, despite all the semantics, shennanigans, popular opinon, polls, laws, court bloviations…. the large grey mammal with a long flexible and prehinsile protuberance at one end, and a short curly protuberance at the other, is simply NOT an ant…. and nothing can change that, even if you DO rename them both.

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This is not a new argument; it has been around at least since Lawrence v. Texas: I can invite an adult male into my bedroom to have same-sex intercourse but not to paint my ceiling for $5 per hour? Huh-wuh?

The escape hatch for liberals is that Kennedy frames all his gay-rights decisions in terms of a new “dignity interest.” So all one has to say is that there is nothing “dignified” about freedom of contract and your cognitive dissonance is preserved undamaged.

Sure, I agree, nobody has a moral right for interfering in a voluntary, contractual relationship between two people, even if one is an employer and the other is contracting to be an employee. That’s simple freedom of association. But when it involves money, and profit, they’ll say that profit-making is evil, and that employers have an unfair bargaining position with employees.

I routinely run into people who think that businesses clearly have evil intentions, while government’s purposes are purely beneficial, and other similar nonsense.

Rational consistency has no basis here because there are circumstances that apply to economic relationships that don’t apply to personal ones.

A legally recognized marriage, ON PAPER at least, is a relationship between 2 individuals of equal status, legally. Neither of them have “power” over the other. And if either of them decide that the relationship isn’t right for them, there are plenty of other individuals where they can go to, where a legal recognition of their relationship will hold the exact standards as I mentioned before. Their “obligations” to each other are both equal and mutual, on paper.

For economic relationships, the employers are the ones that have the most power. And they have a LEGAL right to exercise that power. It’s the entire basis as to how the employer determines the wages it will pay and each employee’s obligations.

Making minimum wage=your employer paying you as much ONLY because it’s illegal to pay you less

Sure, an employee could just seek another job. But that is entirely different than finding another spouse. The employers are the ones with the power, deciding how many jobs there are available and what they will pay. It’s not like the dating game where each individual decides if he/she is available and what they want out of a relationship.

In personal relationships, the “collective bargaining power” is the same between the 2 partners. But for economic relationships, on paper AND practice, it’s not.